Copyright Editor & Publisher Oct 2, 2000| [Headnote] |
| With Web forums for feedback on local businesses, `Denver Post,' Minny's 'Star Tribune' put their money where Word of Mouth is |
A COLORADO MAN HAD A LITTLE PROBLEM AT A .JIFFY Lube shop in a suburb of Denver. They put the wrong weight of oil in his truck and left the old oil filter in the engine compartment, among other service failings.
The man, identified only as "Greg," did more than gripe to friends and co-workers about the experience. He posted a review of the Jiffy Lube location in a new section of Denver Post Online.
"BEWARE! I wouldn't bring my mother-in-law's car to this place for an oil change!"began his one-star (out of five) review in Word of Mouth.
The Web sites of The Denver Post and the Minneapolis Star Tribune are the first two online newspapers to establish a co-branding relationship with Boulder, Colo.-based Word of Mouth (at http://www.wordof mouth.com/dpo and http://www .startribune.com/wordofinouth, respectively.)
Word of Mouth might be the first B2C2BC in online journalism: A business-to-consumer-to-business-and-consumer service. Think of an online yellow pages that includes customers' opinions about the business, and you get an idea of the Word of Mouth concept.
Eventually, the sites will contain listings and opinions about a wide range of services in a community, from auto-repair shops and beauty salons to restaurants and roofers.
"It is essentially a substitute for other online yellow pages," Rick Levine, a co-creator of Word of Mouth, said recently. "'I`he value to consumers is that other people's opinions may be closer to their own than a yellowpage description a merchant is paying for."
For the newspaper, the payoff is "attractive content that starts conversations, that's sticky and very practical," Levine said. Eric Grilly, the vice president of interactive media at The Denver Post, is bullish about Word of Mouth, as is Nick Rogosienski, who has the same title at the Star Tribune.
"We had concluded a relationship with uswestdex.com [now qwestdex.com], and neither partner was satisfied with the relationship," Grilly said. "So we were looking for a directory/yellow pages solution, and we liked the Word of Mouth twist: The focus isn't just yellow pages listings, but a local consumer Web site."
In Minnesota, Rogosienski is gong-ho on the potential of Word of Mouth, even though the site, like that of the Post's in Denver, has been up hardly a week. .
"We're working with them closely to develop a much deeper service than just an online directory," he said. "A big piece of it is what we're viewing as community building that has to do with individuals being able to rate and refer people to our businesses. We feel that will have a great deal of value to our users."
The Word of Mouth logo can be found on each newspaper's home page. The concept began as a theoretical abstraction for Levine and one of his partners, David Weinberger. They are among the co-authors of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" (Perseus Books), which lays out an iconoclastic vision of Internet commerce.
"The premise behind `Cluetrain' is that because people are taling [online] to each other about products and services ... the ability to `eavesdrop,' to get information about merchants and companies, is greatly magnified," Levine said. Companies that don't get in on the conversation will be left behind, he said.
For Word of Mouth to fulfill its potential, however, the critical mass of citizen critics would have to grow substantially. Grilly looks forward to having "20 or so opinions about a place, and find out what my fellow consumers have experienced."
Until that happens, there will be skepticism.
Suppose the guy complaining about the Jiffy Lube shop has his own off-and-lube business down the block. `TThe negative-review issue was raised around here from Day One," Rogosienski said.
"If a company is providing poor service, people are telling others about it all day long," he said. "We're telling them that this gives them the ability to turn a bad situation into good customer service."
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